R.I.P. Giulio Regeni, 28 yo

[runa]

That's not the point I'm trying to make. The point I'm trying to make is that I don't blame all Americans and all my friends back home in the U.S. for what happened in Iraq. I blame the U.S. government, the UK government, the Australian government and the Polish government.

What happened in Egypt isn't Spazz's fault and I think it's offensive to basically write off his country because of something his government did.

I never said it's Spazz's fault ??

Where the fuck did I say that ?????

I told him to be careful because he lives in a dangerous country and, as a gay guy, he must take care of himself.

I'm not that dumb. I know it's a "government" problem.

[ULIZOS]

"I'm sorry Spazz, you know how much I love you, but I would never, ever go in your barbaric country. Never."

[runa]

:dead:

Ok, I'm done.

I refuse to fight with you over that.

[Guest Rachelle of London]

Civil rights may not be important to you, but they are to me.

While you close your eyes on this, many people suffer.

No matter if it's about gender, sexual orientation, politic, etc. It is and will always remain inexcusable.

That's our duty to voice this opinion and to say out loud it is not something we will tolerate.

Huh! I hope you're not referring to me.

I've just said that I've been to Egypt. I'm not ignorant enough to believe all Egyptians are evil and the country is barbaric. I also said I don't agree with the politics of the country. How is that closing my eyes on the matter?

Frankly I couldn't care less where you stamp your passport but I actually know good decent people from that nation. But Don't let good old ignorance get in the way of common sense though.

[Mmmmm]

That's not the point I'm trying to make. The point I'm trying to make is that I don't blame all Americans and all my friends back home in the U.S. for what happened in Iraq. I blame the U.S. government, the UK government, the Australian government and the Polish government.

THIS! Your posts can be so amazing.

[ULIZOS]

They can be, when I'm not typing in all caps, calling people assholes and/or writing in rainbow

[Guest]

Ok, that's the reason i didm't eant at first to open this thread. This is just a page to ho magre that poor guy

No polemics plebee or i'll Locke it immediately.

That said, if i interpret Runa's thought correctly, he wasn't saying egyptian are all horrible people or that you must stay away from there because there are killings or there's corruption, even because egyptian "ordinary people" immediately expressed solidariety

But when a poor guy is abducted and tortured to death by the government, well, there's no sympathy at all and the usual porti al comments arte just BS

That said, again, no political comments, please

[ULIZOS]

He called the country barbaric...

[Guest]

Well the country regime surely is

Now stop

[XXL]

Nothing wrong with Egypt the land or its people, wonderful country cradle of civilisation together with Greece and Rome. Unfortunately it is one of the most corrupt, eternally militarised countries in the world and has been in poltical turmoil for decades

After Mobarak went it's gotten even worse, to the point of civil war and factions fighting for power with zero concern for the people. Kind of like when we "exported democracy" in Iraq by removing Saddam and opened a huge can of worms

The Western Intelligence agencies have been interfering and manipulating/controlling North African countries governments for decades, so they deserve part of the blame for sure. Nothing to do with the people, who are enslaved on their own land

[ULIZOS]

Sorry if I offended anyone, but this is the politics and world events thread. I thought it was okay to talk about this.

I didn't mean to be a dick.

[ULIZOS]

I'll just go away now and I won't get in anyone's way again. I'm just very passionate =(

[Guest]

I frightened you.... Admit ^_^

[XXL]

Italian student killed in Egypt: Giulio Regeni 'showed signs of electrocution'

Source inside Egypt’s forensics authority claims student who was found dead in Cairo last week had broken ribs and traumatic injuries all over his body

The Italian student who was tortured and found dead in Cairo last week had seven broken ribs, signs of electrocution on his penis and a brain haemorrhage, according to a senior source inside Egypt’s forensics authority.

The authority on Saturday handed the prosecutor general’s office its final autopsy report on the Italian student who was tortured and found dead in Cairo last week.

Giulio Regeni, 28, had been researching independent trade unions in Egypt and had written articles critical of president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s government - prompting speculation that he was killed at the hands of Egypt’s security forces.

Egypt’s interior and foreign ministers both dismissed the notion of security forces being behind Regeni’s murder.

The prosecutor general’s office said it would not publicly disclose the contents of the report as the investigation was ongoing.

However, a senior source at the forensics authority told Reuters that Regeni, a graduate student at Cambridge University, had seven broken ribs, signs of electrocution on his penis, traumatic injuries all over his body, and a brain haemorrhage.

His body also bore signs of cuts from a sharp instrument suspected to be a razor, abrasions, and bruises. He was likely assaulted using a stick as well as being punched and kicked, the source added.

A second autopsy in Italy “confronted us with something inhuman, something animal“, Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano told Sky News 24 television last week.

Egypt’s initial autopsy report showed Regeni had been hit on the back of the head with a sharp instrument.

Rights groups say police often detain Egyptians on scant evidence and that they are beaten or coerced. Scores have disappeared since 2013, the groups say. Egypt denies allegations of police brutality.

Regeni was given a funeral in his hometown on Friday and Italy’s prime minister once again insisted that those responsible be caught and punished.

Italy has sent investigators to work with Egyptian authorities in an effort to establish what happened to Regeni.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/14/italian-student-killed-in-egypt-giulio-regeni-showed-signs-of-electrocution

[XXL]

2014 Essay on Europe

The Old World Is Dying

[sotos8]

I'll just go away now and I won't get in anyone's way again. I'm just very passionate =(

well i couldn't agree more with ulizos and we sure had a fight before ,concerning Greece ,my country ,the thread is politics he's right to be political

[XXL]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/13/world/middleeast/giulio-regeni-egypt-killing.html?_r=0

Death of Student, Giulio Regeni, Highlights Perils for Egyptians, Too

CAIRO — On the night he vanished, Giulio Regeni left his apartment and walked past four stores with surveillance cameras that might have provided vital information 10 days later, when his body turned up with welts, burns and fractures that were unmistakable signs of torture.

One eyewitness said the footage would have shown Mr. Regeni, an Italian, being led away by two men believed to be Egyptian security agents. Three security officials said Mr. Regeni had indeed been taken into custody, bolstering Italian suspicions of an official hand in his death.

But the Egyptian police have yet to request the footage, say the shopkeepers who own the cameras, a lapse that human rights advocates say is typical of police investigations here, indicating negligence or a possible cover-up.

If Mr. Regeni had been an Egyptian, his case might now be all but forgotten. He would have been just one of hundreds of Egyptians who have disappeared into the custody of the authorities in the past year. But the fate of Mr. Regeni — who was pursuing a doctoral degree at Cambridge — has attracted international news media attention as well as a formal investigation by the Italian government into the mysterious circumstances and possibility of police abuse.

The attention paid by foreign governments to the deaths of their citizens in several recent incidents in Egypt — the accidental massacre of Mexican tourists having a picnic in the desert in September and the downing of a Russian charter jet in October, in addition to Mr. Regeni’s death — has had the effect of spotlighting Cairo’s at times casual disregard for its own people.

Each development in Mr. Regeni’s case has been breathlessly followed in the Italian news media, putting pressure on Rome to demand that the government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, its close trading partner, conduct a transparent investigation. As a result, senior Egyptian officials have been forced to publicly address the killing. That includes the interior minister, Maj. Gen. Magdi Abdel-Ghaffar, who held a rare news conference earlier this week.

The Egyptian authorities have not said whether they have any suspects or have made any arrests. General Abdel-Ghaffar said the authorities were anxious to solve the mystery but dismissed any suggestion that the police could have been involved in Mr. Regeni’s death.

Mohamed Zarea, who heads the Egypt office of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, said the case bore the “fingerprints of the Egyptian security apparatus,” and might serve to focus international scrutiny on its frequent resort to abuse.

“As we are speaking, there is someone being tortured or facing inhuman treatment in a police station,” Mr. Zarea said. “It is something that happens at every moment. There is not much attention about their situation. The Egyptian government doesn’t care about them. They care about foreigners because of international attention.”

Egyptians have struggled for decades to shake their authoritarian rulers’ indifference to the everyday perils they face, to hold someone accountable for all the buildings that collapse, the ferries that sink, the failing hospitals or the mistreatment of Egyptian workers abroad. The government has been even more resistant to confronting its own security services, despite the fear and anger their practices frequently arouse.

The issue of police torture was a central driver of the 2011 uprising that deposed President Hosni Mubarak. Even so, torture and a tactic known as “enforced disappearances” by the security services have become more frequent in the last two years, rights advocates say, as Mr. Sisi’s government has pursued a sweeping crackdown on political opponents. Several times in the last few months, the anger at the authorities has burst into public view, including protests after the deaths of detainees in Luxor and Ismailia.

On Friday, thousands of doctors gathered in downtown Cairo to protest the assault of two doctors by policemen at a hospital in the Matariya neighborhood last month. It was one of the largest demonstrations in Egypt since the military-backed government banned unauthorized protests more than two years ago, and appeared to put pressure on Mr. Sisi finally to tackle the problem of police abuse.

Adding to that pressure are new details that indicate that Mr. Regeni was in the custody of the authorities before he was killed.

He disappeared on Jan. 25, the anniversary of the uprising against Mr. Mubarak, when security officers were out in force across Cairo to ensure that no protests were held to commemorate the day. Friends said Mr. Regeni had last been heard from as he was headed to a subway station in the Dokki neighborhood, on his way to meet friends in downtown Cairo.

Ahmed Nagy, the prosecutor handling the case, said in an interview that the last signal from Mr. Regeni’s phone was picked up on the street where the subway station is. About the same time, a witness said, he disappeared.

Several witnesses said that two plainclothes security men were searching young men on the street about 7 p.m., the time when Mr. Regeni was last heard from. One witness, who requested anonymity, said he had seen the two officers stop the Italian. One searched his bag, that witness said, while the other looked at his passport. Then the two officers led Mr. Regeni away. The witness said that one of the officers had been in the neighborhood on previous occasions, and had asked people about Mr. Regeni.

Three Egyptian security officials who said they had inquired about the case said that Mr. Regeni had been taken into custody by the authorities because he had been impertinent with the officers. “He was very rude and acted like a tough guy,” one of the officials said.

And all three, interviewed separately, said that Mr. Regeni, who had been researching informal labor movements in Egypt, had also drawn suspicion because of contacts on his phone that the officials said included people associated with the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and the leftist April 6 Youth Movement. Mr. Sisi’s government regards both groups as enemies of the state.

“They figured he was a spy,” one of the officials said. “After all, who comes to Egypt to study trade unions?”

At various times since Mr. Regeni’s disappearance, Egyptian officials have suggested that he had been killed in a car accident, that he was the victim of common crime, or that perhaps some shadowy aspect of his personal life had contributed to his death. They have sternly discouraged theories that the security services played a role.

Sameh Shoukry, Egypt’s foreign minister, told National Public Radio that in Cairo’s discussions with the Italian government “there is no such speculation or accusation levied” about the involvement of Egyptian security forces. “It is rather disconcerting that there should be this impression,” he said, according to a transcript of the interview.

“We have a very large Egyptian population, expatriate population, in Italy, and they face on a daily basis criminal activity,” Mr. Shoukry said. “If I was to speculate that that criminal activity was somehow related to the Italian government, it would be very difficult to conduct international relations.”

Despite the outsize attention to the case, there was little indication that the Egyptian authorities were exerting any special effort to solve it. The shopkeepers with the video cameras said any evidence was lost days after Mr. Regeni’s disappearance, because the footage is wiped out automatically at the end of the month.

At his news conference this week, General Abdel-Ghaffar, the interior minister, did little to reassure a nervous international audience about the investigation into Mr. Regeni’s death.

“We are treating his case,” he said, “as if he were an Egyptian.”

[XXL]

http://www.ansa.it/english/news/general_news/2016/02/09/italy-denies-regeni-was-informer_4fd283b1-1e2f-4f06-914b-d2fe630040bf.html

Italy denies Regeni was informer

(ANSA) - Rome, February 9 - Italy on Tuesday denied that an Italian student who was tortured and slain in Egypt was an intelligence informer.

Department of Information Security (DIS) chief Giampiero Massolo reportedly told the Parliamentary Committee for Intelligence and Security Services (COPASIR) that Giulio Regeni was not a secret service agent or informer and that the case is not likely to be solved any time soon.

Regeni went missing January 25 in Cairo and his severely tortured body was found dumped in a ditch on the outskirts of the Egyptian capital on February 3.

Foreign Undersecretary Benedetto Della Vedova told the Lower House earlier in the day that speculation the 28-year-old Cambridge University PhD studentwas working with Italy's secret services was "patently groundless". He also told lawmakers that Regeni's body - which was flown in from Egypt on Saturday - presented "burns and cuts to the shoulders and chest", describing his death as a "violent, savage killing".

Egypt's Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry told Foreign Policy magazine in an interview, excerpts of which ran on Ahram Online today, that its security forces had nothing to do with Regeni's severe torture and murder.

He was quoted as saying journalists were "jumping to conclusions and speculating without any authoritative information or authentication". He added that a widely reported number of 40,000 political prisoners in Egypt is "a lie".

Also on Tuesday, the head of the prosecutor's office in the Egyptian city of Giza, Ahmed Nagy, told ANSA that no phone, computer or iPad were found in Regeni's apartment or near his body.

However Italian investigators said later in the day they had located Regeni's laptop but not his cell phone, Rome prosecution sources investigating the murder said.

Egyptian Ambassador to Italy Amr Helmy said whoever killed Regeni intended to "ruin relations between Italy and Egypt", but added that economic and political ties between the two countries would not be compromised.

He said it was not possible to "rule out" that "fundamentalists, Salafists, extremists or ISIS" - an acronym for the so-called Islamic State insurgency - were responsible for the killing. However no such group has yet claimed responsibility for the gruesome murder.

A visiting scholar at the American University in Cairo, Regeni was conducting research for his thesis and reporting on Egyptian trade unions for leftwing Rome-based paper il manifesto. He went missing on January 25, the anniversary of the uprising that led to Hosni Mubarak's ouster in 2011.

[Guest]

well i couldn't agree more with ulizos and we sure had a fight before ,concerning Greece ,my country ,the thread is politics he's right to be political

ok.....thanks for accepting my request

i'll lock this thread, so if anyone wants to write bullshits about anything will be free to do it making a new thread

i committed an error to make a thread (with a simple request) in a section that usually i ignore, but i won't make this mistake again.